Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
Promising films coming out in the last part of November include:
The Descendants with George Clooney, director Alexander Payne’s first film since Sideways.
Into the Abyss: Werner Herzog’s documentary exploring American capital punishment.
My Week with Marilyn: Reputedly dazzling performance by Michele Williams as Marilyn Monroe.
You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To. Here’s the trailer to My Week with Marilyn.
You’ll find director Clint Eastwood’s biopic of J. Edgar Hoover to be an interesting take on Hoover’s twisted psyche, if you can stay awake.
Leonardo DiCaprio is excellent playing Hoover over the course of 50 years. So is Armie Hammer (who played the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network) as Hoover’s long time companion Clyde Tolson. Judi Dench nails the role of Hoover’s nightmare mom.
Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (who won an Oscar for Milk) see Hoover as a man tortured by the expectations of his scary mother, which keep him from physically completing his lifelong love affair with Tolson. That’s an interesting take.
Yet the movie drags. When your protagonist is arresting celebrity gangsters, solving the Crime of the Century, persecuting left-wingers and blackmailing Presidents, your story should pop and sizzle.
The movie also suffers from distractingly bad make-up on the older Clyde Tolson and the Richard Nixon characters.
Come on, you’re yearning to see our irresistible stoners in a Christmas movie. There’s not much of a story here – just the two appealing characters and lots and lots of jokes. The light hearted but very raunchy humor targets recreational drugs, racial stereotypes, the 3D movie fad, and lots more.
Neil Patrick Harris returns in another hilarious cameo. And the reliably frightening Danny Trejo shows up as Harold’s menacing new father-in-law. See my Danny Trejo and his scary friends.
You don’t need to see this movie in 3D. I saw it in 2D and enjoyed the 3D jokes, which are apparent in 2D.
As we go deeper into autumn, we’re getting quite the menu of movie choices. Like Crazy is a romance, pure and not so simple.
PBS is featuring the top rate British spy drama Page Eight on this week’s Masterpiece Contemporary.
J. Edgar, Clint Eastwood’s interesting take on J. Edgar Hoover’s twisted psyche has some fine performances, but draaaaags. In contrast, Margin Call is a taut financial meltdown drama with superb performances by Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany and Stanley Tucci. Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In is a beautiful and disturbing thriller – Out There as only Almodovar can do. The Ides of March is a fine political drama with Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and George Clooney. Drive is a stylishly arty and ultraviolent action film, also with Ryan Gosling.
On the lighter side, 50/50 is an engaging cancer comedy with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. The raunchy comedy A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas is filled with lots of jokes and hilarious cameos by Neil Patrick Harris and Danny Trejo.
If you can still find it, don’t miss Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols’ brilliant tale of a psychotic breakdown with Oscar-worthy performances by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. One of the Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
I haven’t yet seen the psychological thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD of the Week is the wonderfully sweet Beginners, with Ewan MacGregor and Christopher Plummer. Other recent DVD picks have been Incendies (the year’s best movie so far), Errol Morris’ gutbustingly funny documentary Tabloid, the Jenna Fischer dramedy A Little Help , the heartwarming documentary Buck, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (1979).
If you’re looking for a pure romance, this long distance love story is unadulterated by the irony and gross-out humor so prevalent today. The girl and guy don’t meet cute. She has a crush and acts on it; he falls for her. They are separated by her unwise impulse to overstay her student visa. Now the romance is complicated – as real life relationships are. The ending is not contrived, and provokes questions about the pair’s future.
In tracing the initial falling-love-love, writer-director Drake Doremus rescues the film technique of montage from the schmaltzy chiches produced by lazier filmmakers.
The stars, Felicity Jones and AntonYelchin, are appealing, and I look forward to seeing them again. As expected, Jennifer Lawrence is very good in a supporting role.
This was a big hit with the audience at Sundance, and I expected that it might became a huge word-of-mouth hit. It won’t be that successful because, ultimately, it’s a good but not great movie. Still, it brings some much needed intelligence and authenticity to the genre.
PBS is featuring the excellent British spy drama Page Eight on this week’s Masterpiece Contemporary. It’s top rate.
How do the British do this so well? First, they cut out all of the explosions and chase scenes. Then they get a high-brow screenwriter – here it is David Hare (The Reader, The Hours, Damage) – to write a character driven whodunit with plenty of paranoid political intrigue. Finally, they deliver a first rate cast: Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, Rachel Weisz, Judy Davis, Ralph Fiennes, Ewen Bremner (Spud in Trainspotting) and Felicity Jones (starring in this week’s Like Crazy).
Page Eight is definitely worth a Tivo. Look for it.
Ewan McGregor’s dad (Christopher Plummer) has just died, shortly after coming out of the closet. As if this weren’t enough to deal with, McGregor is a depressive anyway, with a rich history of sabotaging his relationships. But then he meets Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds)(and they meet cute).
This is a winning comedy – one of the year’s best movies. It’s smart, sweet and original. All of the performances are excellent, especially Plummer’s, which should garner him an Oscar nomination. All in all, Beginners is a notable achievement by director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker).
50/50 is an engaging cancer comedy with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. Margin Call is a taut financial meltdown drama with superb performances by Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany and Stanley Tucci. Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In is a beautiful and disturbing thriller – Out There as only Almodovar can do. The Ides of March is a fine political drama with Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and George Clooney. Drive is a stylishly arty and ultraviolent action film with Ryan Gosling.
If you can still find it, don’t miss Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols’ brilliant tale of a psychotic breakdown with Oscar-worthy performances by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. One of the Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
I haven’t yet seen J. Edgar, Clint Eastwood’s biopic of J. Edgar Hoover, or the raunchy comedy A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas or the psychological thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD of the Week is Errol Morris’ gutbustingly funny documentary Tabloid. Other recent DVD picks have been Incendies (the year’s best movie so far), the romcom Crazy Stupid Love, the Jenna Fischer dramedy A Little Help , the heartwarming documentary Buck, the very original teen misfit movie Terri, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (1979).
Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting the 1964 The Americanization of Emily on November 11. Set in England just before the D-Day invasion, The Americanization of Emily is a biting satire and one of the great anti-war movies. James Garner plays an admiral’s staff officer charged with locating luxury goods and willing English women for the brass. Julie Andrews plays an English driver who has lost her husband and other male family members in the War. She resists emotional entanglements with other servicemen whose lives may be put at risk, but falls for Garner’s “practicing coward”, a man who is under no illusions about the glory of war and is determined to stay as far from combat as possible.
Unfortunately, Garner’s boss (Melvyn Douglas) has fits of derangement and becomes obsessed with the hope that the first American killed on the beach at D-Day be from the Navy. Accordingly, he orders Garner to lead a suicide mission to land ahead of the D-Day landing, ostensibly to film it. Fellow officer James Coburn must guarantee Garner’s martyrdom.
It’s a brilliant screenplay from Paddy Chayefsky, who won screenwriting Oscars for Marty, The Hospital and Network.
Today, Americanization holds up as least as well as its contemporary Dr. Strangelove and much better than Failsafe.
Reportedly, both Andrews and Garner have tagged this as their favorite film.
One of the “Three Nameless Broads” bedded by the Coburn character is played by Judy Carne, later of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.
Former heavyweight champion Joe Frazier has died.
Many consider the 1975 Thrilla in Manila, the heavyweight championship bout between Frazier and Muhammed Ali, to be the greatest boxing match of all time. Ali usually dominates the narrative of 1970s boxing. However, the 2009 HBO documentary Thriller in Manila revisits the fight and its aftermath from Frazier’s point of view. The film depicts Frazier in his final years, broke and living on the margins of society, still boiling with resentment from the experience.
In contrast, the 2009 documentary Facing Ali showcases Ali’s other rivals, who have all embraced their experiences with Ali as their career-defining moment. We hear from George Chuvalo, Sir Henry Cooper, Earnie Shavers, George Foreman, Ernie Terrel, Larry Holmes, Ken Norton and Leon Spinks. Chuvalo, Cooper and Shavers prove to be surprisingly charming raconteurs.
Thriller in Manila is on my list of 10 Best Boxing Movies, and I’ll put Facing Ali on the list when I have time.